Turnout light in special election to replace former U.S. Rep. Tim Scott

Chris Kardish/Bluffton Today Voters at First Baptist Church in Bluffton have the line to themselves as they prepare to cast a ballot in the 1st Congressional District special election primary.

Turnout in the 1st Congressional District primary has proven slow up to the midday point, report poll workers.

“It’s D-E-A dead,” said Judith Blanchard, a poll worker at Bluffton Elementary School, home to two precincts. “We’re waiting for the rush.”

By 10 a.m. those two precincts had a combined 36 in-person votes with another 18 absentee ballots, making up about one percent of eligible voters in those areas, according to poll workers.

Voters have until 7 p.m. to cast ballots in the 16-candidate Republican field or for one of two Democrats. The coastal district stretching from Charleston to Hilton Head Island includes 103,000 eligible voters in Beaufort County, according to Scott Marshall, executive director of the county’s board of elections.

“As light as turnout’s been, maybe we can hope for 10 percent, but that’s on the upside,” he said.

Other precincts in Bluffton reported similarly light traffic, with the three based in the First Baptist Church in Old Town showing between 1.4 percent to 3.4 percent turnout by noon.

Political observers and a number of Republican campaigns consider former Gov. Mark Sanford a lock to make an expected runoff pitting the top two vote-getters against each other in another contest two weeks from now. The winner will likely face Elizabeth Colbert Busch, sister of comedian Steven Colbert.

But in a race with anemic turnout, securing a position in the runoff might come down to which candidate can bring a base of support to the polls.

Blanchard, a frequent poll worker, blamed the weak turnout on election fatigue and the unusual date of a special election primary for a district that many voted on just months ago in November, when Republican U.S. Rep. Tim Scott cruised to reelection just before the resignation of Sen. Jim DeMint prompted the shuffling that resulted in an immediate promotion to the U.S. Senate for the congressman who’d just earned a second term.

While new voter ID laws in place for the primary have changed the rules for casting a ballot at local precincts, neither poll workers or Marshall reported the new law has shown much of an effect.

“It’s been a non-factor,” Marshall said. “That’s one of the questions I ask every polling location, and I haven’t had a single person say there’s been a problem.”

The law requires voters present an acceptable form of identification but also allows them to declare a “reasonable impediment” for obtaining photo ID. They can then cast a provisional ballot, which has to be counted unless a county’s election chief has a reason to believe the it’s false.